Hallelujah

Both arms up. Not reaching — open.

Two limbs rise from a single trunk in a wide V, and where they meet, the barnacles gather thickest: a dense pale cluster sitting right where a chest would be, spilling down the body like beadwork on a garment, and not one of them was placed. The sea set every single one.

It came out of the inlets along the North Carolina coast. Nothing was carved, shaped, or added. The wood was sealed in polyurethane to hold it exactly as the water finished it, then set on a hand-built footed pine base, stained.

Some pieces ask for quiet. This one does not. It is a posture people recognize without being told — hands open, head back, nothing held in reserve. It belongs at the center of an altar, on a mantel, or anywhere in a home that is meant to feel like praise rather than decoration.

Details

• Dimensions: 10" W × 7" D × 18" H, including base
• Weight: 1 lb 3 oz
• Materials: Natural driftwood with intact barnacles, polyurethane sealed finish, hand-built footed pine base, stained
• Origin: The coastal inlets of North Carolina
• Permanently mounted — the sculpture does not lift off the base
• One of a kind — this piece will not be repeated

The name is only one side

Turn this piece and it becomes something else.

That is true of everything we make, and it is the reason none of these sculptures has a front. We name each one for what we saw first — the angle that stopped us. Rotate it a quarter turn and the figure you were looking at is gone, and a different one is standing there. Ridges become a face. A wing becomes a wave. A crowd becomes one body.

So the name is our reading, not an instruction. Set it whichever way it speaks to you, and turn it again when it stops. People who live with these pieces tend to move them a few times a year without quite deciding to.

Carved by water

Not one line in this wood was cut by a blade. Every groove, hollow, and ridge was worked slowly — by salt, by tide, by years in the water — along a coast that has fed and carried people for generations. We think of these as pieces already carved by hands older than ours and left on the shore to be found.

What we do is small by comparison. We find them, we preserve them as they are, and we give them a base to stand on so they can be seen. Sometimes two pieces are set together because they belong together — but the wood itself is never cut, shaped, stained, or painted. Nothing is corrected. The wood says what it already had to say.

Care

Dust with a dry, soft cloth and a light touch around the barnacles, which are original and fragile. Keep out of direct sunlight and away from moisture. For indoor display.